Itjtawy

Itjtawy or It-Towy ("Seizer of the Two Lands"), also known by its full name Amenemhat-itjtawy ("Amenemhat seizes the Two Lands"), was an ancient Egyptian royal city established by pharaoh Amenemhat I. As yet, Itjtawy's exact location remains unidentified. Circumstantial evidence suggests that the site lies beneath cultivated fields east of the pyramids of Amenemhat I and Senusret I at Lisht. There is evidence that Amenemhat, the founder of the 12th Dynasty who ruled approximately 1991 to 1962 BC, established Itjtawy during his regnal year 20, replacing Thebes as the capital of Egypt. However, the earliest known mention of Itjtawy is dated to the pharaoh's regnal year 30 (ten years later than its presumed foundation), and is represented by the double-dated stela CG 20516 now in Cairo Museum. Relocation of the capital may have been a strategic move. The site for Itjtawy – hundreds of miles down the Nile from Thebes – may have been chosen for its proximity to the source of Asiatic incursions into Egypt, in order to help prevent further attacks. Since the determinative sign for Itjtawy is that of a fortified enclosure instead of the conventional city hieroglyph, Egyptologist Steven Snape suggested that Itjtawy was a "disembedded capital", a small center comprising administrative buildings and a royal residence, inhabited only by the administrative staff who ran those buildings; th

Archaeological site data from Wikidata (CC0). Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).